Sapphire RX 5700 XT Nitro Plus in test – sprinting better with less weight and the best Navi card (so far)

1 - Intro and Overview 2 - Tear Down: PCB and Cooler 3 - Benchmarks 1920 x 1080 Pixels 4 - Benchmarks 2560 x 1440 Pixels 5 - Benchmarks 3840 x 2160 Pixels 6 - Power Consumption and PSU Recommendation 7 - Temperatures, Clock Rate, Thermal Images 8 - Fan Speed and Noise 9 - Conclusion and Bottom Line

There is a fan stop, the hysteresis is well solved and the fans only turn when you really need them, even though AMD’s fan control is pretty crazy. While BIOS 1 still has about 1520 rpm, the speeds in BIOS 2 drop to about 1230 rpm, depending on the case and airflow. This is a more than good value and at least with BIOS 2 absolutely perfect for really quiet systems. So it’s also possible ex works and as quiet as Powercolor, but faster.

This doesn’t look any different in the stress test, by the way.

Let us look at the measured values once again in direct comparison as a tabular list:

Sound Spectrum

The measured 36.9 dB(A) are based on the measured approx. 1520 rpm in a closed case. I applied the same gaming load to the open setup in the measurement room, but fixed the fans at approx. 1520 rpm in order to be able to adjust this value as accurately as possible. We see the result in the spectogram and it is amazing that the Sapphire RX 5700 XT Nitro+ and the Powercolor Red Devil are almost as quiet to the decimal place.

With BIOS 2 it gets really quiet. The 32.6 dB(A) are higher than the 31.9 dB(A) of the Powercolor card, but they are not worse to rate, because the Sapphire card is faster and consumes more power. Cooling it down to such a similar level is quite remarkable. On the other hand, the low-frequency components are lower and the Sapphire card also sounds a bit more pleasant and less humming.

The overall sound backdrop can be described as pleasant, never disturbing and thus also results in an excellent overall picture of noise emission and cooling performance.